Peg, Day four

It has become apparent that Peg does not know what feathers are on her food, and that she has never had any bones to eat that she could break, as in quail or pigeon. She discards even the smallest of bones and anything with feathers gets thrown out. I am a bit surprised that her feathers are is such good condition, as it is apparent to me that she has little but chunks of Jack Rabbit as food. They need the intestines as that is where they get their vitamins and the salads, as it were.

I did feed her about 3/4 of a quail (Coturnix?) last night and she wasted enough to feed Jesse a fair meal. I decided that things would go much better with her training if I had some Rabbit to use as tidbits.

First however I needed to get some tumbleweeds under control. They were about to take over the runway. Last year I let them get out of control and had to mow them with the riding lawn mower. That was not pleasant, 1/2 mile strip 30 feet wide with all the dust in between the weeds can cause serious problem with the bath tub drain. Last year I bought a weed sprayer with a boom on it to try to control the things. I have already made several runs down it and the cross runway, with some results, but not the total destruction that I craved. The wind this morning was calm enough to make another attack. Weed Master with a mix of 2 4 D should do the trick this time. By the time I finished that it was mid day and no real time to go hunting, but being bored I did any way.

I didn't want to shoot any of the Rabbits that I have been feeding all last year, so I took the truck and started looking. The best I could come up with was a fresh road kill and not being proud, picked it up and salvaged what I could.

At her feeding time I picked her up and we, dogs and hawk went for our walk. We made our trip down the runway and came back through the sage between the runway and the fence. We jumped a Jack and she craned her neck to watch him run. Upon arrival at the scales I found that she had eaten enough Quail the night before to gain about 10 grams. I brought her in the house and sat in my chair with her for a while. She settled down and pulled a foot up, quite content to sit there with me. I had cut some Rabbit to call her with, and she eagerly took the pieces from my fingers when presented. A friend from Texas called so I put him on speaker phone and talked while I called her to me across the top of the couch. I made her walk for three of the pieces and then made her jump off the end of the couch for the rest of her meal. It is all going quite well, the biggest problem that I am going to have is feeding her too much. Hawks and Falcons work off of positive reinforcement. You don't feed a fat hawk because they are generally uncooperative, and you reward one that does well. She is fat and still does well.